apt to be occasionally excited-the depression is at intervals. in exact proportion. Like a bow overstrained, the mind relaxes in consequence of the exertion. He was naturally extremely sensitive-domestic misfortunes rendered his home unhappy-he flew for a kind of refuge into public life; and the political ruin of his country, leaving him without an object of private enjoyment or of patriotic hope, flung him upon his own heart-devouring reflections. He was at those times a striking instance of his own remark upon the disadvantages attendant upon too refined a sensibility. "Depend upon it, my dear friend,” said he, “it is a serious misfortune in life to have a mind more sensitive or more cultivated than common: it naturally elevates its possessor into a region which he must be doomed to find nearly uninhabited!" It was a deplorable thing to see him, in the decline of life, when visited by this constitutional melancholy. I have not unfrequently accompanied him in his walks upon such occasions, almost at the hour of midnight. He had gardens attached to the Priory, of which he was particularly fond; and into these gardens, when so affected, no matter at what hour, he used to ramble. It was then almost impossible to divert his mind from themes of sadness. The gloom of his own thoughts discolored every thing, and from calamity to calamity he would wander on, seeing in the future nothing for hope, and in the past nothing but disappointment. You could not recognize in him the same creature who, but an hour preceding, had "set the table in a roar"-his gibes, his merriment, his flashes of wit, were all extinguished. He had a favorite little daughter, who was a sort of musical prodigy. She had died at the age of twelve, and he had her buried in the midst of a small grove just adjoining this garden. A little rustic memorial was raised over her, and often and often have I seen him, the tears "chasing each other" down his cheeks, point to his daughter's monument, and "wish to be with her, and at rest." Such, at times, was the man before whose very look not merely gravity, but sadness has often vanished-who has given birth to more enjoy

ment, and uttered more wit, than perhaps any of his contemporaries in any country-who had in him materials for social happiness such as we can not hope again to see combined in any one; and whose death has cast, I fear, a permanent eclipse upon the festivities of his circle. Yet even these melancholy hours were not without their moral. They proved the nothingness of this world's gifts-the worse than inutility of this world's attainments; they forced the mind into involuntary reflection; they showed a fellow-creature enriched with the finest natural endowments, having acquired the most extensive. reputation, without a pecuniary want or a professional rival, yet weighed down with a constitutional depression that left the poorest wealthy and the humblest happy in the comparison. Nor were they without a kind of mournful interest: he spoke as under such circumstances no human being but himself could have spoken-his mind was so very strangely constituted; such an odd medley of the romantic and the humorous; now soaring into regions of light and sublimity for illustrations, and now burrowing under ground for such ludicrous and whimsical examples; drawing the most strange inferences from causes so remote, and accompanied at times with gestures so comic, that the smile and the tear often irresistibly met during the recital. Perhaps, after one of those scenes of misery, when he had walked himself tired and wept himself tearless, he would again return into the house, where the picture of some friend, or the contingency of some accident, recalling an early or festive association, would hurry him into the very extreme of cheerfulness! His spirits rose-his wit returned the jest, and the tale, and the anecdote pushed each other aside in an almost endless variety, and day dawned upon him, the happiest, the pleasantest, and the most fascinating of companions. The friends whom he admitted to intimacy may perhaps recognize him, even in this hurried sketch, as he has often appeared to them in the hospitalities of the Priory; but, alas! the look all-eloquent-the eye of fire—the tongue of harmony-the exquisite address that gave a charm to every

thing, and spell-bound those who heard him, are gone for ever!

In order rather that as much as possible of him should be preserved than that they should be considered as ostentatiously put forward, I have collected the following fragments of his poetry. They were written, it is true, more for amusement than fame; but every thing left by such a man, nọ matter what may be its merit, deserves care as a curiosity. During his lighter hours he was fond of employing himself in this laborious trifling, not wishing, as he said, like Judge Blackstone, to take leave of the Muses until he could be said to have formed some acquaintance with them. Such little efforts gave him the appearance of business and the relaxation of idleness; and when he could not bring his mind to any serious study, he was willing to do any thing rather than it should be supposed he was doing nothing. There is no doubt, however, that if, from his early years, he had made poetry his profession —for such, from modern copyrights, it may almost be called— he would have risen to very considerable eminence. I think no person who peruses his speeches with attention will feel disposed to deny that he had the genuine elements of poetry in his mind-the fire, the energy, the wildness of imagination —the os magna soniturum, and all the requisites which criticism requires in the character.

These specimens are selected from a great many; and no matter what may be their intrinsic merit, the composition of them had, no doubt, its use in matters of more importance. There are few studies which give the orator a greater copiousness, and, at the same time, a greater felicity of phrase, than poetry. To suit the rhyme or harmonize the meter requires not merely genius, but industry, and the variety of words which must necessarily be rejected gives at once a familiarity with the language and a fastidiousness in the use of it. Thus it is a truth that many who have raised the greatest name in eloquence commenced their career by the study of the Muses. Cicero himself did not disdain to be their votary, and, in more

modern times, we find the names of Chatham, Fox, Lord Mansfield, and a number of other equally successful orators, courting their inspiration. In this point of view it is, rather than as soliciting for him the name of a poet, that I have committed the following frauds upon the album of some fair one, now, perhaps, like Waller's Sacharissa, grown too old for poetry.

THE PLATE-WARMER.

IN days of yore, when mighty Jove
With boundless sway ruled all above,
He sometimes chanced abroad to roam
For comforts often missed at home:
For Juno, though a loving wife,
Yet loved the din of household strife;
Like her own peacocks, proud and shrill,
She forced him oft against his will,
Henpecked and overmatched, to fly,
Leaving her empress of the sky,
And hoping on our earth to find
Some fair less vocal and more kind.
But soon the sire of men and gods
Grew weary of our low abodes;
Tired with his calendar of saints,

Their squalling loves, their dire complaints-
For queens themselves, when queens are frail,
And forced for justest cause to rail,
To find themselves at last betrayed,
Will scold just like a lady's-maid;
And thus poor Jove again is driven,
O sad resource! again to heaven.
Downcast, and surfeited with freaks,
The cropsick Thund'rer upward sneaks,
More like a loser than a winner,
And almost like an earthly sinner:

Half quenched the luster of his eyes,
And lank the curl that shakes the skies;
His doublet buttoned to his chin,

Hides the torn tucker folded in.
Scarce well resolved to go or stay,
He onward takes his ling'ring way,

For well he knows the bed of roses
On which great Juno's mate reposes.
At length to heaven's high portal come,
No smile, no squeeze, to welcome home,
With nose uptossed, and bitter sneer,
She scowls upon her patient dear:
From morn till noon, from noon till night,
'Twas still a lecture to the wight;
And yet the morning, sooth to say,
Was far the mildest of the day;
For in those regions of the sky,
The goddesses are rather shy
To beard the nipping early airs,

And, therefore, come not soon down stairs;
But, snugly wrapped, sit up and read,

Or take their chocolate in bed.

So Jove his breakfast took in quiet,
Looks there might be, but yet no riot.
And had good store of list'ners come,
It might have been no silent room;
But she, like our theatric wenches,
Loved not to play to empty benches.
Her brows close met in hostile form,
She heaves the symptoms of the storm;
But yet the storm itself, repressed,
Labors prelusive in her breast,
Reserved as music for that hour
When every
male and female power
Should crowd the festive board around,
With nectar and ambrosia crowned,
In wreathed smiles and garlands dressed,
With Jove to share the gen'rous feast.
'Twas then the snowy-elbowed queen
Drew forth the stores of rage and spleen;
'Twas then the gathered storm she sped,
Full leveled at the Thund'rer's head.

In descant dire she chanted o'er

The tale so often told before-
His graceless gambols here on earth,

The secret meeting, secret birth;
His country freaks in dells and valleys,

In town, o'er Strands and Cranbourne Alleys;

Here lifts his burglar hands the latch,

There scrambles through the peasant's thatch: